ACL Impact on RB

Edition #388

Good morning! ☕

We’re in a bit of a dark period in the NFL calendar at the moment, and with the Rangers and Knicks having exited the post-season picture, the Mets are dominating my thoughts at the moment, and considering what’s happening in Flushing Meadows, that’s not a good thing.

Today I’m going to take a look at some of the camp battles this summer and my expected outcomes. The Jets will be continuing their OTA activity later this month, with the dates released being May 22-23, May 25, May 30-31, June 2, June 5-6, and June 8-9.

According to the NFL guidelines “Teams may conduct a total of 10 days of organized team practice activity, or ‘OTAs’. No live contact is permitted, but 7-on-7, 9-on-7, and 11-on-11 drills are permitted.” 

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👴 Joe Douglas spoke to Pro Football Talk recently and he confirmed what we all knew from the start. The Jets should have brought in a veteran QB to complete with Zach Wilson as a rookie: “I think going back, it would have been great to have a veteran quarterback like a Joe Flacco that first season. But ultimately, we made the decision to jump in head first with our youth movement. We had so many first- and second-year players, and new staff. Let’s go in and attack this thing with youth. We know there’s going to be some growing pains, but we’re all going to grow together. I think we saw some of the benefits of that last year. But sometimes you don’t take into account the ramifications of playing a young quarterback early in his career. And so, I think if I had to do everything over again, I would have probably had that veteran presence in the room early for Zach.”

✈️ Mike North, VP of NFL Broadcasting Planning spoke with the official Jets website about the Jets finding themselves on primetime a lot this season with 6 standalone games: “Trading for a four-time NFL MVP, future first-ballot Hall of Famer, that’s another way to find yourself on the national television schedule,” North told Eric Allen. “Look the Jets were going to be well represented in national windows obviously signing Rodgers kind of upped the ante a little bit. Maybe went from let’s say two or three to closer to five or six and then you throw in some 4:25 pm doubleheader games on Sunday afternoon. Yeah, there are going to be a lot of Jets on national television, please be good.” - He also mentioned that the Bengals tried to swipe the Black Friday game but Amazon was keen to have a NY team represented.

🎓 When Todd Bowles started his NFL journey all the way back in 1986, he made. a promise to his mother that he would one day complete his degree. “Completing my degree was something I had always wanted to do over the years, because it was something I had promised my mother when I went to play in the NFL, and I wanted to follow through on that promise,” Bowles told Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times back in September. On Saturday, he saw that promise through, becoming a proud member of the Mount St. Mary’s Class of 2023, completing his degree in youth and community development. That to me is just awesome. Congratulations coach.

✍️ How close did OBJ come to playing with the Jets, very close. So close in fact, he had already picked out the jersey number he wanted according to Sauce. “Odell, he wanted to play here,” Gardner said in an interview with Sports Illustrated for its June 2023 cover. “It was to the point where he was picking his jersey. “He was telling me, like, ‘Hey, ask so-and-so if I can get the jersey [number I want].’ He was going to wear number 7.” Odell received an offer from the Baltimore Ravens that he simply could not refuse.

🚨 PFF analyst Brad Spielberger suggested the Jets sign Free Safety John Johnson III as their last off-season move: “The Jets made a strong value trade with the Baltimore Ravens for safety Chuck Clark and have some solid depth options, but if they want to add a true deep-third free safety with range, the ability to occasionally cover the slot and versatility in three-safety personnel packages, Johnson could add another dimension on the back end,”

The Jets haven’t had a 1,000-yard rusher since Chris Ivory in 2015, and even then he barely reached the mark, rushing for 1070 yards. Like the playoff drought we’re currently living through, that wait for a 1000-yard rusher is one of the longest in the NFL. In fact, I believe only San Francisco fans have been waiting longer, the 49er’s last 1000-yard rusher was none other than Jets legend Frank Gore in 2014.

Breece Hall was on track to hit that 1,000-yard mark last season before the ACL injury he sustained in a week 7 game against Denver prematurely ended his season. Breece finished his rookie campaign with 463 yards on just 80 carries, good for a yards-per-attempt average of 5.79. You have to remember that up until the week-4 game against Pittsburgh, Breece hadn’t registered more than 8 carries in a game.

There’s a very good chance that if Breece stays healthy, he’ll hit that 1000-yard mark.

The great thing about adding Aaron Rodgers is that he impacts every aspect of your offense. The Jets will throw more because, well, they have Aaron Rodgers. But teams also won’t be able to stack the box to sell out on stopping the run, opening up more opportunities in the run game. If you look at the Green Bay Packers, they’ve had a 1,000-yard rusher in 7 of 15 seasons with Aaron Rodgers as their QB. Ryan Grant, Eddie Lacy, and Aaron Jones all achieved that feat on multiple occasions.

The big question here is, how healthy will Breece Hall be to start the season?

ACL injuries may not be the career threateners they once were with the advancement of modern medicine, but they’re still one of the more serious injuries in football. Not only is there a physical element to overcome, but also a mental one. Players need to learn to trust their knees again.

I’ve read a number of academic studies over the weekend on this issue, and a lot of them paint a very dim picture like this one in the American Journal of sports medicine which concluded “Nearly four-fifths of National Football League running backs and wide receivers who sustain an anterior cruciate ligament injury return to play in a game. On return to competition, player performance of injured players is reduced by one-third.”

A lot of those studies are from the early 2000’s though, so I wanted to take a look at some noticeable players pre and post-ACL reconstruction surgery to see how much it impacted their performance.

We all know about Adrian Peterson who tore his ACL in December 2011, only to return at the start of the 2012 season and win the rushing title and MVP award. Peterson showed that the ACL injury was just a minor blip, he was a great player before and a great player after, but what about other players?

There are two important things to note about the below graphs. I used Saquan’s stats from 2019 as the control for his performance pre-injury, and Jerrick McKinnon’s control stats are from 2017 and his post-injury stats are 2020, as he didn’t play in 2018 or 2019.

The only player who didn’t see a reduction in their YPC was Jerrick McKinnon, and as mentioned above, he was two years removed, he also happened to move to San Francisco for that 2020 season, a team with a very good offensive line. The main player I was focused on in this comparison is Saquon Barkley. Based on age and talent, I think he’s the closest to Breece Hall here. He saw nearly a 20% drop in terms of his yards per carry.

Here we have a look at the yards after contact per reception number, this is a good indication of power retention. A lot of running back power comes from the legs, so its an interesting one to look at in terms of ACL recovery. Most saw a noticeable decrease here with the one exception being Dalvin Cook. Again, if we’re using Saquon Barkley as the most accurate comparison, his yards after contact per attempt decreased by 16.7%.

The final table I wanted to look at was the PFF elusive rating, which builds on the previous yards after contact study. “The PFF "Elusive Rating" distills the success and impact of a runner with the ball independently of the blocking in front of him by looking at how hard he was to bring down.” The Formula: (Missed Tackles Forced) / (Designed Run Attempts + Receptions) * (Yards After Contact Per Attempt * 100). Again, all saw a noticeable decline apart from Dalvin Cook. Barkley saw a 32.7% decrease in terms of his elusive rating.

This isn’t a conclusive study, this is designed more to give an idea of ACL's impact on returning running backs. The recovery timeframe is usually 9-12 months, and Breece tore his ACL on the 23rd of October and had surgery soon after. July would be the earliest mark on that timetable with October the latest.

It’s likely the Jets will want to ease Breece back. It’s unlikely he’ll play in the pre-season at all and I’d be surprised if he got more than 7-8 carries a game over the first month of the season. The likes of Michael Carter, Bam Knight, and Israel Abanikanda will get early season opportunities to prove they should be the Robin to Breece’s Batman.

With all this said, I’m still backing Breece Hall to crack 1000 yards next season.